Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Day 5

We departed Port San Luis at 3 am, and headed out under brilliant starry skies... We found a pretty calm and relatively flat sea, and made our way down the coast. Chad caught a fish, but it escaped as we were netting it. Not 30 minutes later, though, we hooked another one and managed to keep this one - even bigger than yesterday's fish! We will be eating well for a few more days now (not that we weren't eating well to begin with!)

We passed by Vandenberg AFB and could easily see the space launch facilities from an unusual perspective; we then passed several oil platforms -there aren't too many left on the California coast, but we saw most of them pretty closely. After passing point Arguello, we made for San Miguel island. Along the way, the wind picked up, and we regularly were seeing 8-9 knots as the swell helped us along. Fortunately, the crew seems to have become inured to the motion of the boat, and we could easily eat and tend to chores.

Approaching the island, we saw whales (blue whales we think) up pretty close! We reached the anchorange around 5 pm, and while it's very pretty, the wind is howling -- we'll be keeping a close eye on the anchor tonight.